Just to let you know, we've had to use 10% ethanol gas here in the states for the past 20 years and our 2 strokes run just fine on it. It's once you get past the 10% is where you start having problems.
Correct, I've done a lot of research on this. The bottom line is that the effect on cars is minimal to none. In fact, there is pretty good evidence that E20 doesn't have a noticeable effect either. They proposed it to be upped to E15 but that proposal was for January 2010 and it looked promising, so I assume it has been delayed.
Every variation in fuel does have effects, considering that a car will have thousands of gallons of it pass through in its lifetime. And I can't really say the ethanol has zero negative effects, because it probably does have -some-. But, the bottom line is that it's pretty established now in the U.S. without problems. And when it started to pick up here in Wisconsin, I heard a -lot- of the "It's going to ruin your car" rumors and they just aren't true. I can't speak on something like a 1950's vintage car-- but if you've got a modern (90's or newer probably) car, you're never going to notice the E10. Ever.
If you google around, you will find a lot of people running E85 fuel through cars that weren't designed to run on ethanol at all. Many people do this without problems. I wouldn't do this, but, worth pointing out that if someone is running E85 fine, you're probably going to be fine with E10. My car was designed to run on E85, and I use it all the time. The only difference I notice is the gas mileage drop (2/3 gas mileage, ~2/3 price).
I really don't know if it will affect 2 stroke motors inherently differently. My 2 stroke knowledge comes from outboards, and I can say that E10
does have a negative effect on outboards. Alcohol bonds with water, and since the outboard is in a wet environment, this happens much more severely than with other applications. I've seen outboards thrashed (supposedly) by alcohol fuel. Don't put this fuel in your boat if you can avoid it. As far as non-outboards... I'd bet that the majority of us here put E10 in our bikes. It simply isn't that big of a deal. I put premium gas (ethanol-free) in mine because I'm conditioned from outboard lessons. But I don't think it matters. I read threads awhiel back about people running their bikes on E85. No problems reported, except for carb adjustments, which wouldn't be needed at 10%.
At this point in the U.S. different states have different ethanol regulations, but in the ones that have ethanol fuel well-established, the debate is no longer about the effect on the cars-- the debate is now more about whether using ethanol is worth it or not-- we're finding it's difficult to make, and probably easier to get oil. Not to start a threadjacking, but I'm fine with working harder and paying a bit more from something that comes out of an American farm field instead of a middle eastern oil well. I suppose we -do- have non-middle-eastern oil drilling operations in the Gulf... :-/